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Monday, November 30, 2009

Jamal Crawford's Good Misses

Jamal Crawford likes to shoot. Sometimes that predilection benefits his team. Sometimes it does not. One way it (potentially) benefits his team* is manifested by Crawford's desire to get off a shot from anywhere on the court before the end of a quarter. By my count Crawford's heaved five prayers through seventeen games. Those five attempts** account for 5.9% of his total three-point attempts. Remove those five missed shots from his overall stat line and Crawford's three-point percentage improves from 29.4% to 31.2%.

Over the course of the season, Crawford might take 20 shots, for the good of the team, that each have a 5%? 10%? chance of being made. Lumped into his total stat line, these attempts appear to denote Crawford's relative inefficiency when, as a real-world application of field goal attempts, they mostly reveal the limitations of the box score.

*Heaving the ball at the basket can only help the team. On the (admittedly rare) times the heave falls it's a great improvement over dribbling out the clock or (selfishly) taking your heave just after the clock expires so as not to hurt your field goal percentage. The heave is simultaneously an extremely low-percentage shot and a selfless act. It should be celebrated.

**Looking back at my game notes and boxscore play-by-play logs I have him doing this at the end of the first quarter against Houston and Detroit, and at the end of the third quarter against Denver, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. I'm open to corrections or additions to this tally.

1 comment:

That's great, and I love him in situations where we absolutely, positively, must get a shot up, but 31% is still crap for three point shots. He needs to improve that number by at least 4% to be effective(minus the end of quarter heaves).